The Message of the Sphinx AKA Keeper of Genesis Page 16
In later chapters we shall be returning to take a closer look at this ‘First Time’ of the gods. Here, however, it is sufficient to note that Zep Tepi was regarded as a mysterious and wonderful golden age that had immediately followed Creation. Furthermore, in the minds of the ancient Egyptians at least, this golden age had not occurred in some hard-to-find never-never land like the Biblical ‘Garden of Eden’ but in a familiar and unmistakably real physical and historical setting. Indeed it was their emphatic belief that the huge triangular region just south of the apex of the Nile Delta encompassing Heliopolis, Memphis and Giza was the actual geographical location of the events of the ‘First Time’—a real ‘Garden of Eden’, in short, with real geographical features and places. It was here, amidst this sacred landscape, that the gods of the ‘First Time’ were said in the texts to have established their earthly kingdom.[305]
And what was the cultural character of that Kingdom? Rundle Clark gives the best summary:
... all that was good or efficacious was established on the principles laid down in the ‘First Time’—which was, therefore, a golden age of absolute perfection—‘before rage or clamour or strife or uproar had come about’. No death, disease or disaster occurred in this blissful epoch, known variously as ‘the time of Re’, ‘the time of Osiris’, or ‘the time of Horus’ ...[306]
37. The huge triangular region just south of the apex of the Nile Delta encompassing Heliopolis, Memphis and Giza was regarded by the ancient Egyptians as the actual geographical location of the events of the ‘First Time’—a sort of geodetic ‘Garden of Eden’ focused on astronomical latitude 30 degrees north.
The gods Osiris and Horus, together with Re (in his composite form as Re-Atum, the ‘Father’ of the gods) were regarded by the ancient Egyptians as the supreme expressions and exemplars of the ‘blissful epoch of the “First Time” ’.[307]
Osiris they remembered in particular for having been the first to sit on the throne of this divine Kingdom, which he ruled jointly with his consort Isis.[308] The golden age of plenty over which the royal couple presided (during which agriculture and animal husbandry were taught to humans and laws and religious doctrines were set for them) was however brought to an abrupt and violent halt when Osiris was murdered by his brother, Seth. Left without child, Isis brought the dead Osiris back to life for long enough to receive his seed. As a result of this union she, in due course, gave birth to Horus whose destiny it was to wrangle back the ‘kingdom of Osiris’ from the clutches of his evil uncle Seth.
Shabaka texts
In all its essential elements this is, of course, the story that we know as Hamlet (which has a far older pedigree than the Shakespeare play[309]), and it is also, in its most recent Hollywood manifestation, the story of the Lion King (brother murders brother, bereaved son of the murder victim takes revenge on his uncle and sets the Kingdom to rights).
The original Egyptian version of the story—the so-called ‘Memphite Theology’—is found in texts inscribed on a monument known as the ‘Shabaka Stone’, now in the British Museum.[310] Here we read how, after a great quarrel between Horus and Seth (in which Horus lost an eye and Seth a testicle) Geb, the earth-god (the father of Osiris and Isis), summoned the Great Council of the Gods—the nine-member ‘Ennead’ of Heliopolis—and with them passed judgement between Horus and Seth:
Geb, lord of the gods, commanded the Nine Gods to gather to him. He judged between Horus and Seth; he ended their quarrel. He made Seth king of Upper Egypt, up to the place in which he was born, which is Su. And Geb made Horus king of Lower Egypt, up to the place in which his father [Osiris] was drowned[311] which is ‘Division-of-the-Two-Lands’. Thus Horus stood over one region, and Seth stood over one region. They made peace over the Two Lands at Ayan. That was the division of the Two Lands ...[312]
Let us note in passing that Ayan is not a mythical place but was an actual, physical location in ancient Egypt immediately to the north of Memphis, the Early Dynastic capital city.[313] The judgement that was made here was later changed, as the Shabaka Texts go on to tell us:
Then it seemed wrong to Geb that the portion of Horus was like the portion of Seth. So Geb gave to Horus his [Seth’s] inheritance, for he [Horus] is the son of his first born [Osiris] ...
Then Horus stood over the two lands. He is the uniter of the Two Lands, proclaimed in the great name: Ta-tenen, ‘South-of-his-Wall’, ‘Lord of Eternity’... He is Horus, who arose as King of Upper and Lower Egypt, who united the Two Lands in the [District] of the Wall [Memphis], the place where the Two Lands were united ...[314]
Treasure trail
What we have in this amazing story is a sort of treasure trail of clues as to how the ancient Egyptians themselves saw the mythical-historical transfer of the ‘deeds’ or keys of the ‘Kingdom of Osiris’ to Horus by the Great Ennead and Geb.
It seems clear, for example, that this momentous event was thought to have taken place at Ayan, immediately to the north of Memphis, i.e. about 10 miles or so south of modern Cairo.[315]
And as for the dead Osiris, the Shabaka Texts tell us how the god was taken and buried ‘in the land of Sokar’:
This is the land ... the burial [place] of Osiris in the House of Sokar ... Horus speaks to Isis and [her sister] Nepthys: ‘Hurry, grasp him ...’ Isis and Nepthys speak to Osiris: ‘We come, we take you ...’ They heeded in time and brought him to land. He entered the hidden portals in the glory of the Lords of Eternity. Thus Osiris came into the Earth, at the Royal Fortress, to the north of the land to which he had come. And his son Horus as king of Upper Egypt, arose as king of Lower Egypt in the embrace of his father Osiris ...[316]
Where, what, and whose was the ‘land of Sokar’?
It turns out to have been an epithet used by the ancient Egyptians to describe the extensive ‘Memphite necropolis’ incorporating the Pyramid-field of Giza. According to Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, for example: ‘The dominions of Sokar were situated in the deserts round about Memphis and were supposed to cover a large extent of territory.’[317] I. E. S. Edwards tells us that the name ‘Sokar’ was that of ‘the god of the Memphite necropolis’—a predynastic deity of the dead—and that ‘by Pyramid times Osiris had become identified with Sokar’.[318] R. T. Rundle Clark then further complicates the picture by speaking of ‘Rostau, the modern Giza, the burial place of Memphis and the home of a form of Osiris known as Sokar’.[319]
What confronts us, therefore, appears to be a linked sequence of ideas involving Osiris, Sokar, the ‘land of Sokar’ (identified with the Memphite necropolis), and now ‘Rostau’, the ancient Egyptian name for the Pyramid-field at Giza—a name that is in fact carved in hieroglyphs on the granite stela, which we encountered in Part I, that stands to this day between the paws of the Great Sphinx.[320] That same stela also describes Giza in more general terms as ‘the Splendid Place of the “First Time” ’ and speaks of the Sphinx as standing beside ‘the House of Sokar’.[321]
So the clues on the treasure trail, as well as Osiris, Sokar, the land of Sokar and Rostau-Giza, now also include the ‘House of Sokar’ and lead us back towards Zep Tepi, the ‘First Time’.
Bearing all this in mind, let us return for a final look at the Memphite theology as it is expressed in the Shabaka Texts.
We find Horus firmly in possession of the earthly ‘Kingdom of Osiris’ (which had of course been founded in the ‘First Time’) and we find the body of Osiris himself safely installed in ‘the House of Sokar’.[322] Under these ideal conditions, according to the texts, the spiritualized form of Osiris was freed to depart to the sky—and to a specific location in the sky that we have already identified: ‘the place where Orion is’.[323] There it was held that he had established the Duat—the cosmic ‘Otherworld’ on the right bank of the Milky Way—as a sort of celestial ‘Kingdom of Osiris’ for the Dead.[324]
Sphinx god
Selim Hassan actually calls the Duat ‘the Kingdom of Osiris’ and shows how ‘Osiris is styled “Lord of the Duat” and
the Osiris-King [i.e. the deceased Pharaoh] “a companion of Orion” ...’[325] He then provides a piece of incidental information which adds to our trail of clues when he points out, on the basis of careful textual analysis, that the Duat appears in some way to be linked to Rostau.[326]
38. The passageways, chambers and corridors of the ‘land of Sokar’ in the Fifth Division of the Duat as depicted on tomb walls bear a close resemblance to the passageways, chambers and corridors of the Great Pyramid. Could one of the functions of the Pyramid have been to serve as a kind of ‘model’ or simulation of the afterworld in which initiates underwent trials and ordeals?
Like other commentators, Hassan acknowledges that ‘the name of Rostau is applied to the Giza necropolis’.[327] But he also, at various points, defines Rostau as ‘the Kingdom of Osiris in the tomb’,[328] and as ‘the Memphite Underworld’—i.e. the Memphite Duat.[329] In this context he examines the so-called twelve ‘Divisions’ (or ‘Hours’) of the Book of What is in the Duat and shows that references to the ‘land of Sokar’ appear in this text. Indeed, to be a little more specific, he draws our attention to a most intriguing fact. The land of Sokar occupies the Fifth Division of the Duat[330] and: ‘The centre of the Fifth Division [is] called Rostau.’[331]
So Egyptologists do not dispute that we have a Rostau on the ground in the form of the Pyramid-field at Giza and a Rostau in the sky in the form of the Fifth Division of the Duat—a place, as the reader will recall, that was not seen as an ‘Underworld’ by the ancient Egyptians but rather as a specific celestial location in Orion.
Furthermore, as we noted in passing in Part I, the passageways, chambers and corridors of the land of Sokar—amply portrayed on tomb walls in surviving depictions of the Fifth Division of the Duat—uncannily resemble the passageways, chambers and corridors of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Indeed the resemblance is so close that it is permissible to wonder whether one of the functions of the Pyramid may have been to serve as a kind of model or ‘simulation’ of the afterworld in which initiates underwent trials and ordeals intended to prepare them intellectually and spiritually for the terrifying experiences and judgements that the soul was believed to confront after death.
Here, perhaps, was the testing ground for the ancient Egyptian ‘science of immortality’ elaborated in every utterance and vignette of the principal funerary and rebirth texts—the purpose of which was to facilitate the journey of the soul through the daunting traps and pitfalls of the Duat.
Additional food for thought in this regard is provided by Selim Hassan who does not neglect to mention that one of the distinguishing features of the Fifth Division of the Duat is the presence there of a giant ‘double-lion’ Sphinx-god named Aker, who seemingly protects the ‘Kingdom of Sokar’.[332] Hassan also points out that ‘above Aker in this scene is a large Pyramid’.[333] He says that this symbolism, when put in ‘conjunction with Aker in Sphinx form and the name of Rostau’, suggests that ‘the Fifth Division was originally a [complete] version of the Duat and had its geographical counterpart in the Giza necropolis’.[334]
39. The Fifth Division of the Duat features a gigantic ‘double-lion’ Sphinx-god and a large Pyramid. Compare this symbolic imagery with the Great Sphinx and Great Pyramid seen in profile from the south-east.
In support of this idea, Hassan then refers us to another of the ancient Egyptian funerary texts, the so-called Book of Two Ways, where mention is made of ‘the Highland of Aker, which is the Dwelling Place of Osiris’ and also of ‘Osiris who is in the Highland of Aker’.[335] Hassan suggests that ‘highland of Aker’ may be a reference to the Giza plateau, ‘where is the earthly Rostau’.[336] Exactly the same idea occurred to the American Egyptologist Mark Lehner in his 1974 pamphlet, The Egyptian Heritage.[337] Here, after completing a study of Rostau, he wrote: ‘it is tempting to see the lion figures of Aker as a representation of the Sphinx at Giza.’[338]
Roads of Rostau
The Book of Two Ways is a text that was copied onto the floors and sides of coffins over a 250-year span (2050-1800 bc) during the Middle Kingdom. According to the archaeo-astronomer Jane B. Sellers it was designed ‘to aid the soul of the deceased to pass along the roads to Rostau, the Gate in the necropolis which gives access to the “Passages of the Netherworld” ...’[339]
The related Coffin Texts (2134-1783 bc) shed further light on the matter when they state:
I have passed over the paths of Rostau, whether on water or on land, and these are the paths of Osiris, they are [also] in the limit of the sky ...[340]
I am Osiris; I have come to Rostau to know the secrets of the Duat ...[341]
I shall not be turned back at the gates of the Duat; I ascend to the sky with Orion ... I am one who collects his efflux in front of Rostau ...[342]
As Sellers points out, many ancient Egyptian texts insist ‘that the topography of Rostau, though in the sky, is on water and on land.’[343] She also proposes that ‘the paths by way of water’ could have been in that area of the sky that ‘we know as the Milky Way’.[344] This idea seems highly plausible when we remember that the ‘cosmic address’ of the Duat is the ‘Kingdom of Osiris in Orion’ on the right bank of the Milky Way. The logic of ancient Egyptian duality therefore suggests that ‘the paths by way of land’ should be found at the earthly Rostau.
The earthly Rostau is the Giza necropolis,[345] site of the three Pyramids and the Sphinx—so with all this talk of sky-ground dualities it would be almost perverse to ignore the four narrow ‘star-shafts’ which emanate skywards from the King’s and Queen’s Chambers inside the Great Pyramid.
The reader will recall that the southern shaft of the King’s Chamber was directed at around 2500 bc to the centre of the constellation of Orion—i.e. to Orion’s belt at its ‘culmination’ or ‘meridian transit’ 45 degrees above the horizon. Strangely, at the crucial observational moment in the predawn on the summer solstice—crucial, at any rate, to the ancient Egyptians of the Pyramid Age—computer simulations indicate that Orion was seen not at the meridian but in the south-east, i.e. far to the left of the point in the sky targeted by the southern shaft of the King’s Chamber.
40. Summer solstice in the epoch of 2500 bc: the Duat region. Note that Orion’s belt at this crucial observational moment was nut at the meridian but in the south-east and thus far to the left of the point in the sky targeted by the southern shaft of the King’s Chamber. The sky seems somehow out of kilter and one has the uncomfortable feeling that the belt stars need to be drawn round to the south, and specifically to the meridian, so that they can interlock with the shaft that targets them.
Looking at the simulation, everything seems out of kilter—dislocated—and one has the uncomfortable feeling that the stars of Orion’s belt need somehow to be drawn round to the south, and specifically to the meridian, so that they can interlock with the shaft that targets them.
We suspect that for the ancient Egyptians this curious and unsettling ‘dislocation’ of the sky served as the stimulus for an esoteric journey which was undertaken on the ground by the Pharaohs themselves following celestial clues.
As we shall see in subsequent chapters their quest may have been for something of immense importance. But in order to understand why, we must first find out who the Sphinx is.
Chapter 9
The Sphinx and its Horizons
‘The Sphinx has a Genesis, and that was the lion ...’
Egyptologist Selim Hassan, The Sphinx, Cairo 1949
‘[The constellation of] Leo resembles the animal after which it is named. A right triangle of stars outline the back legs ... the front of the constellation, like a giant backward question mark, defines the head, mane, and front legs. At the base of the question mark is Regulus, the heart of the lion ...’
Nancy Hathaway, Friendly Guide to the Universe, NY 1994
Even a casual review of the religious texts of the ancient Egyptians leaves no doubt that they regarded their earthly environment as a sacred landscape which they had inherited
from the gods. It was their absolute conviction that in the remote golden age called the ‘First Time’ Osiris had established a sort of ‘cosmic kingdom’ in the Memphite region which had been passed on to his son Horus and thence through him, down the cycles of the epochs, to subsequent generations of human ‘Horus-Kings’—i.e. to the living Pharaohs of Egypt.
We have seen that the essence of this sacred ‘Kingdom of Osiris’ was the peculiar dualism with which it was connected to an area of the sky known as the Duat, close to Orion and Sirius on the western side of the Milky Way. We have also seen how the centre of the Duat was called Rostau and how Rostau, too, existed in both cosmic and terrestrial realms: in the heavens it was characterized by the three stars of Orion’s belt and on earth by the three great Pyramids of Giza. Last but not least, we have seen how the ancient Egyptians of the Pyramid Age particularly observed the Duat as it lay along the eastern horizon in the pre-dawn at the time of the summer solstice.
The important word here is ‘horizon’. It will prove to be the key to the mystery of who—or what—the Great Sphinx really represents.
Celestial reflections
With the aid of computer simulations, and a little imagination, let us journey to the epoch of 2500 bc, when the Pyramid Texts were compiled, and set our location at Heliopolis on the observatory platform of the astronomer priests. The time of year is the summer solstice, the moment of observation is the pre-dawn, and we are looking in the general direction of the eastern horizon. This means that we have our backs turned to the Giza Pyramids which lie across the Nile some twelve miles to our west.